The one time I rode Amtrak cross-country (back in the '80s, admittedly) , one of the svc workers on the line told us that all of the tunnels built, say, E of the Mississippi River were older than their counterparts on the W side of the river, so that certain kinds of VistaDome cars of the day (I guess) couldn’t be used on passenger trains E of the Mississippi River. Given the desire of all freight operating entities to make their corridors (roads, RR, and so on) more powerful, would it not make sense for the RRs E of the Mississippi to increase the height (or depth) of all the tunnels? Has it, in fact, been done, or in the process of being done? Also, does anyone out there know why the Stevens Pass tunnel on the BNSF Washington line out of Everett has the “door” on it, when most other RR tunnels typically do not?
Cascade Tunnel (Stevens Pass) is 7.8 miles of continuous 1.56% grade, climbing eastward. When it was built the Great Northern used electric locomotives, but the diesels now used need more cooling air. By closing the door at the east end as a train climbs through, the air in the tunnel is forced past the train instead of being piston-ed ahead of it.
If your Amtrak employee was explaining why they don’t use dome cars on Amtrak trains, clearances are probably no longer an issue.
However, back in the days (1940s and 1950s) when the dome cars were being built, there was a definite problem with clearances in the east. I believe the C&O was the only railroad to have dome cars built for passenger service in the east. They were built to a lower profile than the typical western dome car. (C&O had them built for The Chessie, a planned daytime train that never ran; some of the cars later went to the B&O and the D&RGW.)
By the 1960s, though, some of the eastern railroads were having clearance problems in freight service–hi-cube box cars and piggyback trailers on flat cars being the chief culprits. These problems resulted in many railroads increasing clearances as necessary along their routes–replacing tunnels, lowering the floors, or “daylighting” them as necessary to gain the extra feet of headroom. B&O and Southern had, at the time, the most newsworthy of these projects.
I’m not sure whether tunnels were the big issue in the 1980s and 1990s, when double-stack trains became popular, but clearance problems of other types (bridges, usually) had to be fixed anywhere from Chicago east.
Many railroads still have a number of areas where fully-loaded stack cars and the tallest auto racks won’t fit. If I remember correctly, clearances are one of the things being addressed by Norfolk Southern in its attempt to obtain government money for improvement of its east-Midwest route.
Except here and there. The full-height domes still can’t go into Manhattan-- they might be able to make Hoboken. Philadelphia-- do they have to de-energize the catenary to get them into 30th St? Are all tracks at Washington usable?
Carl is dead on - it’s the bridge and obstruction clearance issue more than it is tunnels. There are so many older bridges in the more densly populated east half of the country that the cost of making the changes is pretty drastic. Shoving a 19’-6" doublestack through an opening designed for nothing bigger than 16 Ft. tall is a big issue. (Spent 2 years dropping the floor of one tunnel and raising the roof of two more in the SF Bay area / Franklin Canyon - Martinez 1989-1990 …it ain’t cheap and definately not easy)…you build anything over a railroad with less than 23’-0" ATR and people are going to stop progress on your project mui-pronto…
(Somewhere on the forum is a link to a video clip of an NS stack and autorack train getting decapitated by an old height-deficient bridge)
Rebuilding bridges at $1 million a pop will kill anyones budget. Many of the older bridges can’t be modified (easier just to start over)…All the big railroads have a plan and will stick to it to make line viable for stack trains, etc. Confuses the heck out of highway engineers over the adamant demands for sufficient clearance. (JoeKoh sees the reverse with the truck eating concrete bridge that, when it was built, could handle most any truck - now it has a voracious appetite for high cubes that did not exist back then.)
…Yes the issue of RR clearance at various places in the east has been serious business. All though back in 1947 I witnessed THE TRAIN OF TOMORROW {GM}, with 4 short dome cars on it moving through on the Somerset and Cambria of the B&O between Johnstown and Rockwood, Pa…They had to pass through tunnels even on that branch…and of course on the east west route {Penn. RR}, across Pennsylvania and over on the main of the B&O between Cumberland and Pittsburgh. That train traveled extensively over many lines on a promotion tour, etc…
It has been an issue over on that old Pennsy line across Pennsylvania {now NS}, and last decade they lowered the floor at Allegheny Tunnel at Gallitizin to allow double stacks to be used across that line…
At the same time they closed one of the tunnels there and Allegheny was modified to allow two tracks and of course with the incresed height for double stacks.
OK, international containers come in three heights. 8’6", 9’0", and 9’6". Domestic containers are pretty much all 9’6". At Thrall we figured two 9’6"s in a well would stand 20’2" above the rail. To put this in perspective, the old ICG had a minimum system clearance of only 17’. Now some, routes were higher, but that was the system minimum.
Obviously, some work had been done around the country to open up routes for double stack. Initally, there was no way to operate stacked 9’6"s into central or northern California. The SP owned the route over Tehachapi and the tunnel(s) would not clear two large containers in a well. The Santa Fe, which used the line, put up the money to increase the clearance even though SP owned the line.
To this day, I think it’s the only way to get two stacked 9’6" into or out of central/norhtern California. As far as I know, niether the Donner Pass line nor the Feather River line can take two stacked 9’6" containers. And that does hurt the amount of traffic over Donner.
Conrail had to do work on its line east of Chicago to NY for double stacks. Then Pennsylvania gave them some money to open up things into Philadephia. (Trying to keep the port competitive - it didn’t work)
I understand that NS is working on opening up a direct route for double stacks west from Norfolk into Ohio. They’re getting money from Virginia so as to help the port of Norfolk. (Norfolk is leaving Philly and Baltimore in the dust because the ships can turn faster unloading/loading at Norfolk - they don’t have to sail up Chesapeake Bay)
It says a lot about the economics of double stack that these major capital expenditures have been, and are being, made.
There were numerous smaller projects around the country. But think of the old Mississippi River bridges on the main lines. The double stacks roll over them every day. Somebody was thinking.